Do you ever get tired of seeing streaky foundation lines on your face when you apply your makeup? Or maybe how you can never get your lipstick to stay put within the confines of your lips? Yeah, well that’s when makeup brushes come into play.

Owning a good brush, whether it be for your eyeshadow, lips or face can make a huge impact on the wearability and over-all look of your makeup. Now, we aren’t saying go overboard with the brush kit. Unless you’re a makeup artist in the works, you generally only need a few brushes to tackle those beauty woes.

So scroll below and check out the brushes worth investing in…

Powder Brush

A powder brush is usually recognised by the fluffy bristles. The brushes with a domed head and heavily-packed bristles are the ones to look out for. They result in a super smooth application and a pore-less finish. You can use it for layering on translucent powder or even bronzer—even your face creams!

Real Techniques Powder Brush
Real Techniques Powder Brush

Concealer Brush

While it’s totally cool to apply concealer under your eye with your fingers, a concealer brush usually saves up on time, blends beautifully and doesn’t leave you looking dry or cakey.

NYX Pro Spot Concealer Brush
NYX Pro Spot Concealer Brush

Blush Brush

For applying blush, usually an angled cheek brush works wonders. The soft bristles with the design of the brush allow you to sweep across different ranges of blush formulas (from creams to powders), giving you a perfect blended look. This brush also has a dual purpose of contouring to give you cheekbones a more defined look.

Taste Double Ended Cheek & Lip Brush
Taste Double Ended Cheek & Lip Brush

Angled Eyeliner Brush

Short with stiff bristles, this allows you to have amazing control over your cream or gel liner. Just hold the brush at an angle (never straight on), and apply the liner with gentle strokes. It also makes for a perfect cat eye liner!

The Body Shop Slanted Brush
The Body Shop Slanted Brush

Eyeshadow Brush

While there are many, many shapes and sizes of an eyeshadow brush, you actually only need a small brush head that allows a precise application with minimal shadow waste. Of course, once you’ve mastered eyeshadow application you can move over to a longer and fluffier shadow blending brush. But for now, this one’s a keeper!

MAC Eye Shader Brush
MAC Eye Shader Brush

Highlighter Brush

We all want that highlighted glow on the top of our cheeks. The key to achieving that glow is a fan brush and some powder highlighter. Because of it’s feathery texture, it becomes easy to sweep highlighter over the cheekbone to achieve a natural glow-worthy look. It can even be applied to the cupids bow.

Morphe Soft Fan Brush
Morphe Soft Fan Brush

Lip Brush

While we all want the perfect pout, something it’s hard to achieve precision with just your lipstick wand. A lip brush makes it easy to clean up the mess, and lets you control the amount of lipstick/gloss you’re applying on.

Colorbar Lip Brush
Colorbar Lip Brush

So there you have it newbies, the 7 most basic brushes you can use from covering your base (foundation) to your eyeshadow and liners, to your cheeks and lips.

Have you stocked up on any of these yet?